


all the ways I got to know

by verity



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Soul Bond, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-25 07:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9808820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: Victor used to glance in the windows of marque studios and look at the flash on the walls sometimes, with curiosity more than longing. What would it be like to feel someone else’s soul? There are songs about it on the radio. Romantic. In his actual life, it’s always Yakov saying, “get over yourself, get more sleep, stop daydreaming on the ice.” Or it was.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazulisong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEG, THE BEST AND WORST OF ENABLERS

"Have you decided on a mark of your own?" says the marquist, adjusting the tilt of his ankle with her gloved hands. 

Victor's eyelids are heavy. "Not yet. I want it to be—"

"Unique?" she says.

Victor says, "Meaningful."

The marquist has already drawn a stark perimeter around the faded initials on his ankle, now half-submerged in fresh black fill. Yakov was with Victor the first time, and if Victor were following the unwritten commandments of their sport, Yakov would be here now. Sometimes there's a ceremony. 

Instead, there's just Victor and the marquist, her bright hair swept up into a neat coronet. Flowers bloom up from beneath her collar over her throat. She hums along to the music on the radio as she works, one of those pop songs that was everywhere last summer. The instrument in her hand buzzes against Victor's skin.

* * *

In Russia, marks are as common as piercings. Some are even purely decorative. Georgi has a half-sleeve of voided ones that he’s tried to force into a stylish geometric pattern after the fact. Mila’s never been bonded to anyone but Yakov, but she has a delicate feather on the inside of her upper arm. 

Victor used to glance in the windows of marque studios and look at the flash on the walls sometimes, with curiosity more than longing. What would it be like to feel someone else’s soul? There are songs about it on the radio. Romantic. In his actual life, it’s always Yakov saying, “get over yourself, get more sleep, stop daydreaming on the ice.” Or it was.

The black square on his ankle itches, but Victor resists the urge to scratch. He won’t be able to lace a skate over it for a few weeks if he wants it to heal well. The skin feels warm and sore every time he rubs moisturizer into it. He thought he’d feel something more, but he doesn’t. 

That’s not how it works.

* * *

"You want me to help choose?" Yuuri says a week later, perched warily on the couch in Victor's room. "I can't do that!"

"Of course you can. The mark is for both of us, isn't it?"

Yuuri frowns. "I guess."

"I'm only coaching because of you," Victor says truthfully. "Come look at Pinterest. I made a moodboard."

"I don't know what that is," Yuuri says.

Victor has 153 pins. Yuuri scrolls through them at a hectic pace, thumb scrubbing over the glass of Victor's phone. "I tried to find something elegant," Victor says. "Something you'd like."

Yuuri makes a weird noise, like he's choking. "I'm not very elegant. This'll be your mark as long as you're a coach, Victor. Don't make it about what I like. What do _you_ like?"

When Victor saw the video of Yuuri skating, when he decided to come here, he expected that he'd find the Yuuri he danced with in Sochi. That Yuuri—outgoing, unafraid—would never have pushed Victor to confess: _I haven't liked anything in years but you_. "When you think of me," Victor says, instead, "What do you think of?"

"Skating?" Yuuri says weakly.

" _Think_ about it."

Yuuri is quiet for a long minute, playing with the laces of his hoodie. "Blue roses."

* * *

The one marque shop in Hasetsu smells powerfully of antiseptic. There are only two artists, each booked out for weeks. Not even the name Nikiforov frees up a space. "You shouldn't get a new mark so soon after having one covered, anyway," the receptionist says. "I know you didn't get it done here, Nikiforov-san, but our policy is thirty days."

Before Victor can object, Yuuri says, "I understand. It’s no trouble."

The receptionist smiles at Yuuri, his face brightening. "How are you healing?"

Somehow, Victor forgot that Yuuri, too, has broken a mark this season. "I'm okay." Yuuri scratches lightly at the crook of his elbow, where his warmup jacket wrinkles. "Thanks for asking."

Outside the shop, Victor says, "Can I see your old mark?"

"You've seen it in the onsen already," Yuuri says. "It doesn't look like anything now. Just a circle."

"What did it look like before?"

Yuuri sighs. "A star."

The snow has melted, but Hasetsu is still unseasonably cool. Yuuri shivers as they cross the bridge that joins the two sides of town. His cheeks are pale. In his long coat, Victor is almost too warm. He unwinds the scarf around his neck and holds it out to Yuuri. "Take this. I don't need it."

Yuuri hesitates. "You're too generous."

"Ha," says Victor, and watches with satisfaction while Yuuri loops grey cashmere around his throat.

* * *

Yuri Plisetsky shows up before the dark square on Victor's ankle has healed.

"You're a fucking idiot," he says, getting right in Victor's face. "Do you know how pissed off Yakov is?"

"Are you sure?" Victor says. "I imagine he's enjoying a break from being in my head."

Yuri kicks Victor in the shin. It's surprising how much that hurts. "Why would you think that?"

"Hmm," says Victor.

Yuri says, "You made me a promise."

At the other end of the rink, Yuuri is skating figures: nonchalant, or trying to act that way. Victor doesn't know yet what's in Yuuri's heart, what he'll know when that blue rose links Victor to Yuuri's soul. He glimpsed a piece of it, once, when Yuuri wrapped his arms around Victor's neck and said—

"I have an idea," Victor says.

* * *

When Victor was sketching out the beginnings of these pieces, working through them on the ice, Yakov said nothing. Just watched. He'd said nothing when Victor was a child, crying himself to sleep in Yakov and Lilia's spare bedroom. Sometimes Victor wondered if the bond worked, if Yakov felt anything at all.

Yuri struggles with _Agape_ in every respect. He's too young to skate the program, really, and technically it pushes his limit in every aspect. Yuri watches Yuuri's footwork jealously when he thinks Yuuri isn't looking. 

Victor is always looking.

* * *

Victor and Yuuri eat katsudon the night before they visit the marquist.

Their marquist has dark hair shot with pure white, her skin a blank canvas; marks have a strong stigma in Japan. "Here are a few sketches," she says, spreading them out over a table. "Of course, I can make alterations."

"He'll decide," Victor says, pointing to Yuuri.

Yuuri flushes. "Ah—"

"He's your coach," the marquist says evenly. "I imagine you do as he says."

After a moment, Yuuri points to a blossom with linework that's more ink splatter than line, shaded in grey and blue. "I like this one. It's interesting."

"And where will you put it?" says the marquist.

Yuuri glances at Victor. "I thought—" He reaches back and touches his shoulder.

Victor shakes his head. "Put it somewhere you'll see it."

"Can you put the mark on the inside of my wrist?" Yuuri says to the marquist.

She nods. "That's a very sensitive place, though. How is your pain tolerance?"

Yuuri laughs. "High."

"And for you—" She turns toward Victor.

Victor rests his palm on his chest, over his heart.

* * *

The marquist didn't ask Victor about his pain tolerance. The jab of the needle is bearable, but the constant percussion against his rib cage aches. He feels like he can barely breathe. Warm fingers curl in his own and Victor nearly startles.

"Sorry," Yuuri says. "Just—you can hang onto me if it hurts. If you want."

The whole point of the bond is to help Victor take care of Yuuri, not the other way around. Why hold with tradition now, though? Victor tights his hand in Yuuri's, pressing their palms together, and says, "Thank you."

Victor drinks a glass of water while the marquist takes a short break between them. She walks around the shop, stretching her hands, while her assistant pulls out a new sterile pack of needles and sanitizes all of the surfaces in the workstation. Dreamy rock plays in the background, the lyrics sung so quietly they sink beneath the distorted hum of guitar. Yuuri keeps glancing between his phone and Victor, fidgeting in his chair. 

“Are you nervous?” Victor says.

Yuuri’s shoulders hunch in. “Are you sure? You really want _me_?”

The mark on Victor’s chest throbs. “Who else?” he says lightly.

At home in Saint Petersburg, watching the grainy video of Yuuri on his phone, this seemed so simple. Find Yuuri. Be his coach. Trade in one life for another. Only, instead of leaving it all behind, Victor sees his old life more clearly as it unravels at his feet. How did Yakov do this? Take a ten-year-old boy, scared and trusting, and ink a brand onto his skin, tying the two of them together?

“Yuuri,” Victor says softly, and then again, “ _Yuuri_.” Yuuri’s head jerks up. “You don’t have to be afraid.” He’s not really talking to Yuuri.

The blue rose on Yuuri’s wrist looks larger than the one on Victor’s chest, although that’s really an illusion of scale. Victor holds Yuuri’s free hand the whole time, though Yuuri’s fingers are slack in his own. He can’t believe this is happening. He can’t—

“I can’t believe this is real,” Yuuri says.

Victor says, “Oh.”

* * *

Yuuri has a lot of emotions, so Victor has a lot of emotions, too. Sometimes he’s gripped by acute, inexplicable anxiety; others, equally inexplicable joy. “Are you okay?” Yuuri says, looking at Victor’s pale face, sweat beaded on his brow. They’ve been browsing through a sea of equipment catalogs, nothing that exciting, Victor trying to persuade Yuuri it’s worth investing in a new pair of boots.

Victor has to fumble for the right words in English. “This is stressful for you?” 

“A lot of things are stressful for me.” For a moment, Yuuri looks as uncomfortable as Victor feels. “Don’t worry about it.”

That night, Victor lies in bed down the hall from Yuuri. He can sort out Yuuri’s feelings from his own when he tries; perhaps it’s because the bond is so fresh that they’re so overpowering. Just now, a wave of sadness hits him. Tears sting his cheeks. Victor doesn’t get up. Maybe that’s wrong choice. He doesn’t know.

* * *

On the ice, though—

On the ice, it’s good. When something isn’t working, Victor can redirect Yuuri before Yuuri gets too frustrated with himself; he can push practice late or cut it short depending on what direction Yuuri’s mood is going in. “Let’s go for a walk,” he says today, at the time they’d normally break for lunch. “Let’s go down to the beach.”

Yuuri drains his water bottle. “Let’s jog, you mean.”

“Just walk,” Victor says.

People have always called Victor cold—friends, competitors, even lovers. His own mother. During the long winters in Saint Petersburg, Victor felt as cool and empty as a sheet of glass, even when he felt fine. Now he wriggles his toes in the sand and rubs absently at his chest. Yuuri’s eyes track the seagulls in flight against the sky before they lower toward the horizon.

“Sit with me?” Yuuri says when they reach a rocky outcropping.

Victor does, folding his legs beneath him and getting sand all over his sweatpants. After a moment, he reaches over and touches the back of Yuuri’s hand. Yuuri startles. “I want to see it,” Victor says. “Your mark.”

“You see it all the time,” Yuuri says. “It’s the same as yours.” He lifts his hand, though, and turns it palm-up so Victor can see the blossom peeking out of Yuuri’s sleeve. 

A decade ago, someone tossed a wreath of blue roses out onto the ice. Before he came to Hasetsu, Victor hadn’t thought about it in years. _When you think of me, what do you think of?_ Funny how it works both ways, now: he thinks of blue roses and thinks of Yuuri.

Victor runs his thumb over the mark on Yuuri's wrist, careful not to dislodge the clinging remnants of the scab that covered it. So careful. Victor can only see into his heart, not into his head. 

"What do you want me to be to you?" 

Yuuri's pulse throbs beneath Victor's fingers.

* * *

When he skates _Eros_ , Yuuri looks at Victor with come-hither eyes, and his soul sings out wordless determination, fear, and desire. His emotions sound Victor like a bell. Yet what moves Victor most of all is the trepidation that settles in when Yuuri skates the full program through and says, "I'm sorry, the landing on the toe loop—"

"I'm more concerned about the take off on the salchow," Victor says.

When Yuuri skates _Eros_ , Victor skates with him. Mirrors him in body and soul. That's the point of all of this, after all—that Victor can coach Yuuri through every move and moment, correct his technique, release him from hesitation and rein in his nerves.

"Run through it again," Victor says. "Keep it clean this time."

* * *

Yakov hangs up when Victor calls. The first eight times, anyway. 

"Are you coming back to competition?"

"Are you going to hang up on me unless I say yes?" Victor says.

Yakov doesn't say anything, but he doesn't hang up, either. 

"I wanted to ask you about the bond," Victor says.

It's early evening in Saint Petersburg, late morning in Hasetsu. Yuuri is doing off-ice training today, jogging to the Ice Castle and back while Victor sits on one of the benches in front of the onsen and eats through his international calling plan. Light cascades through the trees overhead and scatters over the paving stone in abstract patterns that Victor's eyes keep skipping over: light to dark, dark to light, light to dark.

Yakov sighs. "Perhaps you should try Georgi."

"It's not that kind of bond."

"There's only one kind of bond," Yakov says.

Victor says, "I'm sorry."

Another long pause. Yakov must be home now, heating up dinner; he does all his cooking on Sundays. "If you were a real coach, you'd know there's no moment to yourself, not ever," Yakov says quietly. "There's no room for selfishness. Putting your mark on someone—that's responsibility. You don't have it in you, Vitya."

"How would you know? Now?"

Yakov says, "I know you."

* * *

The broken mark on Victor's ankle scars—he should probably have followed the instructions not to immerse it in water—but the rose on his chest heals perfectly. He sees it mostly at an angle, foreshortened, while he dresses and undresses. When Victor was choosing the placement, putting the rose over his heart seemed romantic, but now it feels strange to have put his mark somewhere so easily concealed.

Yuuri wears his mark on his sleeve, literally, in a small town conservative enough that it draws eyes everywhere he goes. People stare in the onsen. People stare in the supermarket. Victor can't take his own eyes off Yuuri, so how can he blame them? The attention makes Yuuri alternately nervous and flushed with pride. "Do you ever get used to it?" he says to Victor as they walk home together from the store, Victor carrying a sackful of exciting new hair products. "Like—people always look at _you_."

Victor is a silver-haired gaijin with a signature fragrance who has done several ad campaigns for major retailers. "A lot of people saw the H&M billboards. The underwear ones, with Becks?"

"Yes, I _know_."

"You should do fashion, Yuuri," Victor says. "You're so—" English fails him. красивый. Beautiful?

Yuuri grimaces. "No."

* * *

Victor is so selfish. He's very selfish. Yakov is right, he's terrible, incorrigible. He's been lying in bed with his eyes closed for an hour and he still can't sleep. He can't stop thinking about—

Posed on silk sheets, head thrown back. Yuuri. The long stretch of his throat, rounded by his adam's apple. His muscled chest, the slight softness of the skin on his belly and upper arms, even so slimmed down. The mark on his wrist. Victor's mark. Yuuri's desire burning bright in Victor's gut.

—and Victor's stroking himself, he can't stop it. He wants, he wants, and he can feel Yuuri—Yuuri must be touching himself, too. Victor is eavesdropping. He really is very selfish. He wants to be the one making Yuuri feel like this. He wants—

* * *

In Beijing, he kisses Yuuri.

* * *

In Moscow, he says, "If you need anything, Yakov will help you." 

"I'll be okay," Yuuri says.

Victor takes Yuuri's hands into his own. "You're upset. You don't have to lie to me. I can feel it."

"I wish I could go home with you." Yuuri lifts his hand and presses it against Victor's chest. Over Victor's heart. "You're scared. I don't want you to have to do this alone."

* * *

In Barcelona, Yuuri puts a ring on Victor's finger.

* * *

In Barcelona, Victor brings Yuuri a crown of blue roses.

"Oh my god," Yuuri says faintly. He bursts into tears again in the kiss and cry when they announce his score. 

Victor can't stop hugging him, burying his face in Yuuri's hair and the roses. He doesn't remember what happened to the crown someone gave him all those years ago, what the roses smelled like, the softness of their petals. He doesn't want to ever forget these ones. "Yuuri," he says. "Yuuri—"

And after, he says, "You'll have to be a five-time world champion."

* * *

In Barcelona, silver medal resting on their hotel bed, Yuuri's tired, jittery, more overwhelmed than excited. He takes one look at Victor's face and says, "Don't tell me what I'm feeling right now."

"But I know," Victor says, puzzled.

"Did you like Yakov knowing whatever you felt? Knowing when you were happy or sad?"

"It didn't matter," Victor says. "I don't think my soul felt very much like anything."

Yuuri looks up from the suitcase he's rummaging through. Something swells up in Victor's chest, a visceral thing: a solid ache beneath his breastbone, so earnest and fulsome it makes Victor's cheeks flush with a combination of embarrassment and joy. A year ago, Victor saw a glimpse of this in Yuuri's eyes and it made him wild with longing. _Stay close to me_. "I don't think that's true," Yuuri says.

Victor swallows. "Put your mark on me."

"What," Yuuri says.

"Put it somewhere I'll see it," Victor says. "I want everyone to know that I'm yours and you're mine."

Yuuri sits down on the bed next to Victor. Sitting, their heights are closer; Yuuri touches Victor's cheek, slides his hand along Victor's jaw, beneath his ear. Pulls Victor close enough that their lips meet. His desire meets Victor's and matches it. And, oh, that ache, that force that pushes Victor toward Yuuri—that's Victor's, that's his own. "Mine?" Yuuri says, wondrous, when they draw apart.

Victor lifts Yuuri's hand and presses the blue rose to his lips. "I've been yours," he says. "Keep me forever."

**Author's Note:**

> The marquist in Barcelona can't read Japanese, so she doesn't question the artful calligraphy. "It means 'beloved,'" Yuuri says smoothly when she asks. Victor will never cease being surprised by him.
> 
> He gets the mark on the wrist opposite Yuuri's rose: [カツ丼](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katsudon).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [all the ways I got to know by verity [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10948818) by [illutu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/illutu/pseuds/illutu), [Rhea314 (Rhea)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhea/pseuds/Rhea314)




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